Media reports say that Steve Jobs will return from his medical leave June 6 and launch Apple’s new iCloud music service at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, which will allow users to stream their music library to their computer, laptop or mobile device anywhere they can get Internet access.
For the better part of a decade, June has meant one thing for Apple: rebooting. The iPhone was released in June. The three revisions after it were also announced in consecutive summers. Apple is expected to also announce its latest upgrade to the iOS that powers iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches. It will also announce the latest revision of OS X: Lion.
Apple has had to reinvent itself several times since it made waves with the Macintosh computer in the 1980s. After the technology industry left it for dead in the 1990s, Jobs mounted a comeback to launch the iPod, which helped lead Apple back to the top of the tech world.
How do you reinvent yourself? How does your organization do the same? Hollywood has refreshed numerous film franchises in the first 10 years of this century. June through the end of the 2011 will be no different and it could influence what movies are released for years to come. There are reboots like Green Lantern, Winnie the Pooh, Captain America and The Smurfs. There are also sequels like the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film, the last Harry Potter installment and another Transformers flick. In the case of Disney’s longtime super-franchise about the Hundred-Acre Wood, Disney enlisted Pixar king John Lasseter to executive produce, yet returns to its hand-drawn animation roots.
Your community is always craving something new. Social media can get stale even after a few minutes. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel all the time, and your ideas can suck, that’s OK too. But don’t stop creating. Former President Theodore Roosevelt said, “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”